1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer program product for networking. More specifically, the present invention relates to provisioning and/or configuring virtual machines on corresponding virtual networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modern customers of data centers need to respond to a business climate that permits a new service provider (or customer) to be a disruptor in one year, and then become disrupted in a following year. Consequently, as a customer seeks scalable data processing resources, that customer may require computing power that spans more than one data processing center.
In a grid or cloud computing environment, a number of virtual servers can be assigned to the customer's task by a data center operator. Since the virtual servers can be geographically dispersed, and rely on the Internet to exchange work units among them, the topology of the network that establishes system integrity can be complex. In prior art solutions, a data center operator would dedicate plural HMCs (Hardware Management Console) to the operation of configuring each set of virtual servers within each data center. In addition to having distinct internal and external virtual and physical LAN segments assigned to the customer's virtual servers in each data center, the customer contends with multiple administrative domains. As a consequence, set-up, day to day administrative management and expansion to plural LAN segments can be time consuming and delay deploying extra capacity into service for the customer. Moreover, traditionally, the operation of a single data center often is assigned an administrator on a one-to-one basis. Accordingly, multiple data centers have been managed by multiple administrators, and the job of tying all those functions together has been assigned to another administrator.
Accordingly, improvements and remedies are needed.